Strategy & Operations Associate - Talent

The Opportunity

This role requires in-office attendance 5 days a week (Gramercy).

The Challenge: How do you systematically win the top 1% of talent in the most competitive markets when they're not looking for jobs?

Traditional companies outsource this problem to expensive recruiters or post jobs and pray. We're building something different - an internal talent acquisition engine that operates like the best sales organizations: data-driven, experimental, relentlessly optimized, and executed at scale.

The reality: A lot of great hires come from proactive outbound outreach, not inbound applications. The candidates we need - top-tier marketers, operators, strategists - aren't scrolling job boards. This is a sales and operations problem disguised as a talent problem.

Your mission: Build and own the relationships that let us compete for talent against companies 10x our size. You'll work directly with founders and leadership to design talent acquisition as a competitive advantage, not just a support function.

What makes this interesting: This role blends strategy with high-leverage execution. You'll design sophisticated targeting strategies and conversion-optimized messaging frameworks, then spend hours executing those strategies, analyzing what works, and iterating rapidly. Think of it as building and running a highly-optimized outbound sales motion - except you're selling careers and competing for talent against companies 10x our size.

Think of this role as:

• Strategy design: Who are the top performers in marketing, sales operations, recruiting? Where do they work? What messaging will resonate with them?
• Go-to-market strategy: How do we reach passive candidates at scale? What channels work? What messaging converts?
• High-volume execution: Spending hours daily in tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter designing Boolean searches and scaling high-volume personalized outreach messages.
• Conversion optimization: How do we increase response rates from 5% to 25%? What A/B tests should we run on outreach sequences?

What You'll Do

Build & Execute the Talent Acquisition Engine

• Run sophisticated Boolean searches in tools such LinkedIn Recruiter to identify high-potential candidates across different functions
• Review hundreds of profiles daily, assess fit against strategic Ideal Candidate Profiles you've built
• Manage multi-touch outreach sequences across dozens of candidates simultaneously
• Conduct quick screening calls with interested candidates to assess fit and maintain pipeline velocity
• Experiment with creative sourcing beyond LinkedIn - targeted email, Twitter/X, Slack communities, Reddit, conference lists
• Design role-specific acquisition strategies: who's the target market, where do they congregate, what motivates them to move?
• Build and continuously refine Ideal Candidate Profiles based on what patterns emerge in your best hires
• Create messaging frameworks optimized for different personas - test hooks, value props, personalization approaches
• Run structured experiments: A/B test subject lines, try different outreach sequences, measure everything

Optimize & Scale

• Build dashboards tracking the metrics that matter: response rates by message type, conversion through each funnel stage, time-to-engagement, source effectiveness
• Analyze what's working and what's not - which companies yield the best candidates? Which messages get responses? Where are bottlenecks?
• Document winning strategies into repeatable playbooks that can eventually scale beyond you
• Conduct market intelligence: where does top talent congregate? What are competitive comp packages? Who's hiring and who's laying off?
• Present insights and recommendations to leadership on talent market dynamics and acquisition strategy
• Optimize workflows and build automation where it makes sense (but know when personal touch matters more)

Partner & Collaborate

• Work closely with the founders to understand what they need and ensure seamless candidate handoffs
• Collaborate with hiring managers to truly understand roles beyond the job description
• Train and leverage offshore sourcing support for high-volume, lower-touch searches
• Share learnings across the team and continuously raise the bar on candidate quality

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 1-3 years in management consulting (MBB strongly preferred), strategy consulting, or top-tier strategy & operations
• Builder mentality: You're energized by creating something from scratch, even if it means doing unglamorous work initially
• Analytical + scrappy: You think in frameworks and optimize based on data, but you're also willing to hustle and do what it takes
• Exceptional written communication: You can write dozens of compelling, personalized messages daily that actually get responses
• Intellectual honesty: You're clear-eyed about trading some prestige for ownership, impact, and accelerated learning
• Resilience: Low response rates don't discourage you - they make you curious about how to improve

Strongly Preferred:

• Experience with high-volume outbound work (sales development, growth marketing, bizdev) - you've done the grind before
• Natural curiosity about people, what motivates them, and how to craft compelling narratives
• Competitive drive - you want to win talent away from top companies
• Systems thinking - you document and systematize as you go, building toward scale
• Genuine interest in how great companies are built, organizational design, or talent strategy

You'll thrive here if:

• You see repetitive work as an opportunity to build systems and get better, not as beneath you
• You love immediate feedback loops and rapid iteration
• You want to own outcomes, not just contribute to them
• You're excited about building the foundation of something that will eventually scale beyond you

Not Required:

• Traditional recruiting background (fresh perspective is valuable)
• Expertise in education/EdTech (we'll teach you)
• Prior LinkedIn Recruiter mastery (we'll train you on Boolean search)

Why you'll love Inspira

• Amazing people with a great vision and values
• Mission-driven team culture focused on student success
• Your work directly impacts the lives and careers of students across the globe
• Health, dental, and vision insurance, base plans 100% employer paid
• Pre-tax benefits (FSA, DCFSA, HSA, Commuter)
• Flexible paid time off (PTO) and paid holidays
• 401(k) with company match